Behind a microphone, Ron Wolfley is passionate, melodramatic and completely over the top.

He is football. He speaks the language you want to hear.

“Let the bloodletting begin!” he tells a radio audience on the eve of the 2013 season.

Problem is, the NFL can no longer endorse such violent words, at least not publicly. The new mandate is all about player safety and self-preservation, not bloodlust and highlight-reel collisions. The primal appeal of America’s favorite sport has never been more taboo.

Even Wolfley — the former wedge-busting Pro Bowler and current Cardinals analyst — is beginning to change his own perspective, maybe even his vocabulary.

“Nobody has ever indicated to me along those lines, obviously,” Wolfley said. “But I’m starting to become more sensitive to it. Not because someone said something to me, but because I’m starting to see my brothers — guys whose blood I wore on my pants — and how they’re suffering.

“I’m starting to realize that Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy is real. It’s real and it’s happening to guys. Early-onset dementia is happening to guys. And to me, it’s a situation where I’m starting to become more and more sensitive to it because I’m starting to see some of the damage that has been done.”

To Cardinals fans, Wolfley is almost a mini-John Madden. He’s animated, over-caffeinated, a gladiator in his own medieval world. He doesn’t shop for groceries. He hunts and gathers. He has much more than a wife. He has a warrior queen.

To illustrate how it feels to be a football player, he might suggest you put your head in a ceiling fan and find out.

But this is also the age of medical enlightenment regarding head trauma. The NFL recently agreed to pay $765 million to settle a class-action lawsuit from more than 4,500 ex-players. The concussion epidemic has put the long-term viability of the NFL in question.

What’s left is a dicey sales pitch: The NFL is in the violence business. Everybody knows it. Everybody wants it. But in a litigious society with a generation of broken-down players trapped in their own private hell, the league can’t put violence in the storefront windows any longer.

“The essence of the game is blocking and tackling and doing it with malice, to drive somebody else into the ground with intent,” Wolfley said. “That’s the game of football.

“When I stepped on the field in 1985, the context in which I competed was, ‘Today, I am not my brother’s keeper. I am not. When I walk in between those white lines, I will hit you with bad intentions. I will hit you with everything I have because my job is not to protect you today.’

“Today, you walk between those white lines and you are your brother’s keeper. To me, the paradigm shift is acute. Do you see what a mental change that is in perspective? And I don’t know how some of the guys do it, competing with the handcuffs that have been placed on them.”

There’s a chance that Wolfley, 50, would feel differently if his brain was scrambled and he struggled to get out of bed. Maybe he’d feel embittered if he didn’t have a great job working for a NFL organization. But probably not.

Wolfley reveres the physical nature of football. He says he’d never sue the NFL because it would “impugn the way he played the game.” He claims that every player of his generation knew the risks involved, even if they didn’t understand the medical particulars. To act otherwise is not very gladiator-like.

“I’ll give you an example,” Wolfley said. “It’s Thanksgiving Day in Detroit. I wham-block this big defensive lineman, hit him on top of the head. He goes down on all fours. His head snapped down. And when it snapped up, (running back) Stump Mitchell’s thigh went right into his temple.

“The guy was sleeping in a nanosecond. He was literally snoring on the field. Every one of us walked back to that huddle, and we knew: That can’t be good for you. So it would be a little disingenuous for me to be part of that.”

Still, Wolfley is beginning to change. Or at least he’s thinking about it. He understands why ESPN no longer has a segment called, “Jacked Up,” featuring the most violent hits of the weekend. With so many ex-players suffering, he’s aware of how some of his analogies might seem in poor taste.

Yet the game has a heart of darkness that can’t be ignored or marginalized, and to act otherwise is also dishonest.

The dichotomy is why the sport is a crossroads, even if it the sport has never been more popular.

“It’s a feudal game. It’s a game of land acquisition,” Wolfley said. “There’s a very primal undertone that women love because football players are alpha males, hyper-aggressive, in shape, young, virile and driving the spear into the ground, metaphorically speaking, on a weekly basis.

“That’s appealing on some level to some women, and why 41 percent are season-ticket holders in the NFL. ... At the same time, it’s attractive to guys because we’re all kind of built that way. It’s the undercurrent the NFL never wants to highlight, and I wouldn’t want to highlight it, either. But it’s there. And to some degree, that capacity for violence is inside all of us, in my opinion. Football just reminds us all of who we are as a species.”

Let the bloodletting begin.

Reach Bickley at dan.bickley@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8253. Follow him at twitter.com/danbickley. Listen to “The Dan Bickley Show With Vince Marotta,” weekdays from noon to2 p.m. on Arizona Sports 620 (KTAR-AM).

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